Shame and Rightiousness

Inciting incident

Today we will be looking at a number of verses, but I’ll invite you to turn to the book of Jonah.

I reciently discoved a music artist that I really liked, her name is Audrey Assad I found her music to be really encourageing and woshipful, especially a few that took some scripture principals or pslams and put them to music. If you’ve never heard her music, it’ simmilar to Fernando Ortega’s style that uses unstressed vocals.

for example, Her song “I shall not want” is a beautiful application of psalm 23 written in poetics stanzas and sung with piano and violin accompaniment.

I realy how she portrayed God in her music so persoanally, and how a heart of love can be so conviting when it written in song.

So what does this song have to do with the book of jonah?

Well let me tell you what happened when I looked up Audrey Assad to see if I could find more of her music. What i found puzzeled me at first, because her newest music was very differnt from her older music. I looked at her history and it says that she was born into a prodestant family and eventually converted to catholisism. in her 30’s she had a crisis of faith and stopped writin music for neraly 2 years. In a video describing her album “evergreen” She says “I built my identity around being right” and shes says her crisis came when she realised that who she belived God to be may not be right after all. This almub she was making, whitch included even unto death, was a prayer asking God to show himself to her. This was about 4 years ago. Since then Audrey has identified herself as a member of the LGBTQ+ community and publically said last year on twitter that she is no longer a “Practicing Christian” on twitter. to her fans she says to not worry that shes is still making music liek before because she is” still in love with God, whoever he is.”

After being so encouraged by her music I was shocked and distressed that person who had been putting scripture to song so beautifully had abanoned that faith so completely. It was particularly jarring because it seemed like she was writing about God so intimately. This was particlarly dsitressing in light of the recent scandal of Ravi Zacharias comming out.

But why did I find this so distressing? Mabye you find this distressing too.

Now, to be clear, I am not a christian because of in important people or inflencers. My faith is in the historical person of Jesus Christ and in his holy word that is without error. Every single christian is only a sinner who has had thier sins forgiven, being a well known christian doesn’t make you any less a sinner than any other person.

But that’s what disturbed me so much. Realizing that if a Pastor of a mega church, a world class philosopher and apologist, and a sucessulf christian artist could fall into deep sin, what hope do I have of not making the same mistake?

That is where we come to the book of Jonah

Summerize story of Jonah

Go to Ninivah, Its getting more violent

Jonah flees

Well known: storm, thrown overboard, swallowed by the fish

He goes to ninivah, deliver’s God’s message, and the people repent.

Jonah 4 CSB

Jonah was greatly displeased and became furious. He prayed to the Lord, “Please, Lord, isn’t this what I said while I was still in my own country? That’s why I fled toward Tarshish in the first place. I knew that you are a gracious and compassionate God, slow to anger, abounding in faithful love, and one who relents from sending disaster. And now, Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live.” The Lord asked, “Is it right for you to be angry?” Jonah left the city and found a place east of it. He made himself a shelter there and sat in its shade to see what would happen to the city. Then the Lord God appointed a plant, and it grew over Jonah to provide shade for his head to rescue him from his trouble. Jonah was greatly pleased with the plant. When dawn came the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant, and it withered. As the sun was rising, God appointed a scorching east wind. The sun beat down on Jonah’s head so much that he almost fainted, and he wanted to die. He said, “It’s better for me to die than to live.” Then God asked Jonah, “Is it right for you to be angry about the plant?” “Yes, it’s right!” he replied. “I’m angry enough to die!” And the Lord said, “You cared about the plant, which you did not labor over and did not grow. It appeared in a night and perished in a night. So may I not care about the great city of Nineveh, which has more than a hundred twenty thousand people who cannot distinguish between their right and their left, as well as many animals?”

Evidence of Jonah’s Sin

Jonah doesn’t love the city of Nineveh

Concerned, pity, cared - look upon with compassion

He went to the city, but he hated them and wished for their destruction.

Something is wrong with your heart

Jonah’s Anger

Anger and despair of life are not a sin, but the root of his anger is the problem.

But look at teh responce. God revealed to the Assiryans thier sin, and they repented! God reveals to Johnah his sin, and he ignores God! We never see Johnah’s answer at all!

Jonah, the moral, religious prophet of God is more a slave to sin than the filthy Pagans that God sent him to. How can that possibly be!?

Diagnosis of his sin

God let’s Jonah diagnose his own condition.

Jonah was a Jew and a prophet of God. He was excellent at keeping God’s law and even delivering God’s message to people.

Jonah is devastated the God would give the exact same love and grace to the violent pagans that He gives to the righteous moral people of Israel.

The heart of Jonah’s sin is self-righteousness. But what does that really mean. Moral and upright living?

The opposite of righteousness shame

Everyone is seeking something that will make them “right” or make me a somebody. It gives me meaning, confidence, significance, value, hope. My justification for living.

self-righteousness: take something that is good, and make it the thing that is your self-made rightness.

If when you lose something, you lose all hope, that was your hope! That was your rightness! If you feel like nothing, that was your everything. It was what you worshiped!

His entire self-image based on his feeling of moral superiority to other cultures and other religions. I am right they they are worng! He had turned his religion into an Idol. His self image, his I identity was that he was superior to people like the Assyrians who lived in Nineveh.

The book ends with a question because it is a question to everyone who reads it.

We are all Jonah!

What is wrong with our hearts? We may not be racists, but all people are deeply self-righteous.

Signs of self-made rightness

Here are some probeing questions for us to understand what this looks like.

What is somthing if you lost it, you lose all your happiness and meaning?

do i have a hard time taking criticism? Why am I irritable, grumpy, no one gets things right but me? It our self-made rightness in our heart.

The feeling of being constantly inferior is just as much self-righteous feeling superior. Anxiety, always falling short? self-righteous is the focus of the heart.

At some point in time, you made the decition that you are valuble because people talk about you this way, or mabye you decided your life is worth living is if and only if you are able to do this...

Every human being does this, eveyone has thier own uniquie yet very simmilar self-rightness.

Here is another:

Is the a catagory of people that you disdain or dispise?

At the root:

You don’t see yourself as a miracle of grace. “God’s grace was enough to save me, but you?!”

Our reaction should be that of grace. “God loves the hard cases!” His grace is enough for anyone!

We all would be paying for our own for for all eternity if not for Jesus.

The more mature you become, you look back and say: “wow! I was like that look how Jesus has changed me!” Jesus loves somone even like me!”

A mature Christian is always aware and guarding against self-righteous. the more you see it, the less it controls you. The less you are aware of it, the more it controls you.

Therapy of his sin

· This make true Christianity unique: No other religion says that the most moral upright citizen and the most cruel and wicked person are both equally lost and both equally in need of saving grace of God.

We must not only repent of our sins, but also of our own self-rightness.

Growing as a Christian means God continually taking you back and showing the self-righteousness you build up in your heart.

Our Sins Separate us from God

Romans 3:23 - For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God[1]

Sins cannot be removed by good deeds

Galatians 2:16 CSB

and yet because we know that a person is not justified by the works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we ourselves have believed in Christ Jesus. This was so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.

Galatians 2:21 CSB

I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing.

The very suggestion that I have enough good in me to make up for the infinite guilt of sin on my ledger is an insult to God.

Ephesians 2:8–9 CSB

For you are saved by grace through faith, and this is not from yourselves; it is God’s gift—not from works, so that no one can boast.

Paying the Price for sin, Jesus died and rose again.

Romans 5:8 - But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.[1]

Jesus rescued us from our sins by being judged by God as if he had committed out sins Himself! He willingly took the full force of the wrath of God for our sins when He died on the cross. Jesus suffered so that God could proclaim the debt of sin paid, and we could be judged as if we were as sinless as Jesus himself. Jesus proved that the debt was paid by rising from the dead 3 days later.

Everyone who trusts in him has eternal life.

Joh 3:16 - For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.[1]

Eternal life is a gift! Jesus paid the price so you don’t have to! All you need to do to receive this gift is believe! Believe Jesus is who He says He is, trust in Him and his sacrifice alone to pay the price for all your sin.

Lets go back to Audrey. I hope you can see now how her an jonah are the same. Jonah’s hope meaning, and rightiousness was found in his religion rather than his God. Jonah knew that he had the truth and followed God’s law, but he thought that made him superiour. Audrey’s self-admition was that her identity was built around being right. If i had to guess, In a simmilar way her religion was her Idol, and that made her superior to those who did not achive the same standard as her. This was a self-made rightiousness that when challenged by the turmoil of this world, fell apart. And try as she might have she was unable to find any meaning, hope, or rightiousness in her religion when she found that it did not in fact make her superiour to those around her.

Matthew 7:21–23 CSB

“Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven. On that day many will say to me, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, drive out demons in your name, and do many miracles in your name?’ Then I will announce to them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you lawbreakers!’

This is the where it really hits me with the soungs that Audrey wrote. She wrote beautiful songs about Jesus, but it is entirery possible that she never really knew Jesus at all. What do you mean, who was she writing the songs to? Well, if it wasn’t the real jesus it was an imagenary Jesus. A jesus who loved her because she was a religious and moral person. It was the Jesus that she wanted, but not the real Jesus she needed. That’s why it failed her in the end. The real, living Jesus never fails.

Jesus’s words in Matt 7:23 are terrifying when he says: depart from me, i never knew you.

Look at the objections, they prophecied , cast out deamons and performed miricles? I’ve never done anything like that. writing songs and preaching sermons can’t hold a candle to that kind spiritual power. Just because I do things for God doesn’t mean that I know God or am walking with God. our being right with God is completely based on our total and complete reliance on Jesus’s rightniousnes, not based on our own self-made rightnoesness. This is one of the central messages of the entire Bible, and somthing the was not understood at all by the pharasies that sentanced Jesus to hang on the cross.

John 17:3 CSB

This is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and the one you have sent—Jesus Christ.

What is my application, how has this study impacted my life.

Repent of my self-rightness. Ruthlessly, agressively remove all my thikning that I am in any way more desirving of God’s grace than any other other people.

This starts by asking God to reveal to me what good thing I am making into an idol, a self-made rightneoss. Like Jonah, that might be painful because it involves taking somthing away.

When God reveals the sin in our hearts, and we realize the self-made rightness we have created for ourselves, we must choose to belive God, to agree with him that thinking this way is sinful. My possestions, my heritage, my skills, my status, my reputation, my choices, or my success does not make me a “good person”, or the lack thereof an “inferior person”. The very act of thinking this way is itself a sin. My hope, my rightnoesness is found in Jesus Christ alone. The real truth is in my sin I am not a person worthy of love, but Jesus chose to love me anyway. Because Jesus gave me His rightnoesness through faith, I have a hope, meaning, and value , a rightness greater than anything on this earth, and even if the moutians melt and the nations tear themselves apart this will remain true for all eternity.

I ask God to convict my heart and renew mind mind so there is a complete reversal in my thinking. instead of being Ashamed of the Gospel of Christ and finding my righousness in somthing other than Christ, I will fully rest in the righnesness Christ gives me and that idol of my heart now becomes my shame because i concidered it more worthy than Jesus.

If I were able to talk to Audrey, this is what I would say:

I know you are still searching, and there is a very real God who loves you even more than you can imagine. The reason you are bored, defensive, driven, scared, bitter, attacking, fleeing, is because you make trying to make something be to you what only He can be. Making something else your righteous, your hope, your meaning.

The person you are looking for is Jesus, just not the Jesus you thought you knew. The real jesus is a man who walked on this earth more than 2000 years ago and suffered the wrath of God in your place. He is not the Jesus who rewards you and loves you because you do good works, but the Jesus who loves you dispte your sin so He can be your rightousness. There is nothing you can do to make Him love you more than He already does, there is no sin you can commit that will cause Him to love you any less. He loves you so much that He will keep on pursuring you without end. I promise you will forever be searching and unsatisfied until you find rest in his all suffcient grace.